Radio Broadcasts in the US

Michael Henderson did a thousand weekly radio talks on American radio stations when he and Erica lived in Oregon for 21 years. He is posting from time to time a selection of them on this website as they may still be of contemporary interest and some tell stories related to Initiatives of Change's history and people.

I have not yet had the chance to meet Irina Ratushinskaya, a leading writer of her generation in the Soviet Union, but I am fortunate to have an autographed copy of her book ‘Grey is the Color of Hope.’ For some reason this stirring account of her life in a Soviet Labor Camp – where she was imprisoned for her poetry when she was only 28 years old and nearly died from maltreatment and the hunger strikes she endured to call attention to the abuse of human rights – has not yet caught on here. In Europe it is a best seller, with more than 70,000 sold in Sweden alone.

When Lord Carrington resigned as British Defence Secretary at the time of the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands many well-meaning people tried to talk him out of it. But he felt it was the right thing to do. Not out of a sense of blame but because the country felt angry and humiliated and if he had stayed it would have made it harder for the government.

A friend of mine, Alyce Cornyn-Selby, an elegant lady with a whimsical frame of mind, has written a delightful book based on the premise that all of us have been doled out a certain quota of words in life and woe betide us if we exceed the limit. The book is called ‘The Man Who Ran Out of Words’ and is about a precocious young child who learned to talk at an early age, and talked and talked and talked his way through school until when it became time for his first job interview he opened his mouth and nothing came out.

There are not too many examples in history which we can point to where nations have moved beyond self-interest and certainly not enough examples of where individuals in public life have done so. On a national level, one thinks immediately of the Marshall Plan and America’s generous treatment of her former enemies at the end of World War II. On an individual level, one thinks of courageous resignations by people who disagreed with policy.

‘I had to restrain my wife from hurling a can of beans at this woman in the supermarket,’ he said. He had been following her around and staring at her. This was just one remark that stayed with me after watching a British television program about the problems facing people who are disfigured